The Daily Background

Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin on the current reluctance of reporters to ‘call bullshit’ when politicans get a little fast and loose with the truth:

Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do.

What is it about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that makes them so refreshing and attractive to a wide variety of viewers (including those so-important younger ones)? I would argue that, more than anything else, it is that they enthusiastically call bullshit.

[…]
I’m convinced that my enthusiasm for calling bullshit is the main reason for the considerable success of my White House Briefing column, which has turned into a significant traffic-driver for The Washington Post’s Web site.

Read on, for the only time you’ll hear a Washington Post columnist use the word “bullshit” 15 times in the span of a 500-word piece. And no, it wasn’t published in the Post. In case you were wondering.

Filed under: News Media, Z-TDB Blog